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Oftentimes I’ll spend hours working on a joke or a comic to get the timing and phrasing perfect. All that work for the joke to be hilarious to me. And only me.

Side note: I don’t laugh at my own jokes and I get little pleasure out of hearing people laugh at my jokes, but what I love more that anything is when I make a joke, in person, and I get a non-laugh reaction. A reaction that is involuntary and honest, like a laugh but not a laugh. Like a wide-eyed silence or a vocalized exhale or an OMG jaw-drop

Anyway, back to the point. When I spend time and energy working on a joke, it’s only funny to me. But when I write a joke I don’t like—a joke I consider “too easy” or topical, I tend to not publish them because it “doesn’t fit IDK” or because I fear the joke has been done before (because if I came up with it so easily, I’m sure it’s been done 1000 times) and someone will call foul play (even though nothing is truly original anymore).

Sometimes though, I say, “eh fuck it” and post it anyway. Those tend to be the jokes or comics people like the most. The ones I hate, most people like. What does that say about me and my sense of humor? Or about what I think about other people’s sense of humor? What does that say about my willingness to compromise my writing? Do I compromise and pitch to the lowest common denominator? Or do I keep writing whatever the hell I want?

That’s been the struggle. I’ve heard people say,

“An artist who deceives himself is a fraud and a whore”

-My Name is Asher Lev

Would I be deceiving myself by writing things I don’t enjoy to get an audience? I could fill pages of cheap jokes, video game references, and big-titted woman no problem. But that would make me a whore. On the other hand, at what point am I just writing for myself?

I’ve also heard the idea of “build it and they will come” when it comes to writing. If you build work that you personally enjoy, the people who also enjoy that work will find you. Yeah, that’s doesn’t seem to totally be the case with IDK. Unless only 50 people like the same stuff as me. Where’s the balance between artistic integrity and mass appeal? Too far one direction and there is no art. Too far the other way and there is no audience.

What’s art without an audience?

And with that said, I’ve just reached my pretentiousness limit for the day.

I’ve been reading your stuff for a long time, and have experienced some of the subject matter. I appreciate that you can make light of what people would prefer stay behind closed doors. At the same time it is forcing those issues into the light that make it hard for people to like your comic. It makes them uncomfortable and they don’t like having these types of things said out loud. It isn’t vulgar or ludicrous like some other “offensive” comics that get an audience. People can justify liking those because liking something vulgar in its humor is acceptable or because they blow the jokes out of reality so the joke is safely removed from the reader’s life. Your jokes are only exaggerated in the way that people are actually saying what they are thinking. You are being truthful and yes it is humorous that people can go their whole relationship hating each other and only stay together out of fear of being alone. At least I find it funny that we delude ourselves. I get the same blank stares you talked about by just showing some of my favorite comics on here to people. People aren’t ready to accept these flaws in each other and themselves and so they can’t laugh at them. You have a small audience, but I don’t think that should belittle what you write about. I find it meaningful. That being said if you felt the need to add in some soft pitching to gain a larger audience, I wont hold it against you. Everyone needs to eat. Just be careful justifying doing something you hate even for good reasons. I don’t want it to eat you up inside. People like me will continue to read and laugh either way.

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Caroline Thompson

There are some jokes that are staples because of how reliably they can get a laugh, but become stale for that exact reason.

In Tina Fey’s book (go read it–it’s good) she mentions SNL’s classic “sneaker-upper” where they parody someone and the real person slowly walks up behind them looking confused or offended. It’s a cheap easy laugh that experienced people there aren’t always proud of doing.

actual quality of a joke doesn’t correlate to laughs–it’s not like people ever get sick of memes…